Shop facilities... power, sprinklers?

Hi,

For those of you with shops in the 5000-10000 sf range, I was curious as to how much electrical power you have? I've been looking at various properties in southern CA that range from a 200A @ 208v (totally insufficient) to 1200A @ 480v ( ). Most are at 400A @ 208v, good enough for three CNCs running simultaneously plus lights, computers, and whatever. Possibly insufficient as well as time goes on.

Also, do your shops have sprinklers? I'm almost positive that I need them here in CA, especially since there will be small amount of welding in the beginning, followed by a lot of robotic welding later on.

Thanks,
Airborne

Tumbleweeds.

We have 5000sf w/400A 240 volts, 8 CNC's 2 air compressors, several grinders, 2 welders, drillpresses, belt sanders, hardinge chucker, 3 ac/oil fired heaters, 7 vibratory deburring machines, lights, 7 pc's, fans, vertical and horizontal band saws, soda machine, 4 refrigerators, 3 chest freezers, an electric oven, 1 pirana iron worker, our house (aprx 2000sf), and I am sure there are a bunch of things I forgot. Our electricity is supplied with a grid tied solar array, we have run most of it at the same time, although there are only five of us to run around and keep it running. We have never run short of power.

just been there, done that

I just closed on a building that is 16,800 square feet and has 1500 amps at 480V. Check out in the manufacturing section for some of the back ground on the project. I was very thrilled with my broker as he was on the ball. He is with CBRE and I can give you his name if you are interested. If you are tire kicking, I would check the following two sites as they have the most comprehensive search engines for available properties.

http://www.cbre.com/EN/
http://www.lee-associates.com/global/index.php

I am putting in sprinklers because I am welding around fabric! Let me know if I can help in any way.

Regards,

Jason

Our building is 25K SF, of which about half is the machine shop. We have 700A @ 208V. The only high current draw equipment is in the shop, and the air compressors. 3 VMC's, 3 CNC lathes, and a lot of manual machinery. 14 employees running it. Half of our building didn't have sprinklers. 2 years ago our insurance carrier refused to renew our policy if we didn't install them. You would want to check with your insurance carrier before leasing or buying space without sprinklers. We are in Northern CA.

Thanks folks.

Steel hand, how much did it end up costing to get sprinklers installed for the rest of the building? Does your company own the building? We're leasing, so building insurance would be taken care of by the landlord. The only insurance we're responsible for is our own business liability insurance and possibly machine insurance if we choose to get it.

I know a guy who tried getting a business license a few years ago in the Long Beach area. He had to go through hell to get it, including getting sprinklers installed. This was for a one man wood shop.

Check the fire code in your area. It may be that sprinkers may be CO2 from a battery of cylinders instead of water. Makes sense if it were so because a deluge water sprinkler can ruin machine tools that would otherwise survive a modest baking. My old boss was forced to have a water sprinkler in his timber frame shop with wood infill. I know for a fact he brought in a guy to scupper the sprinker system controls so the inspector couldn't detect it.

I thought it foolish but there was some sense to it. Past fire patterns have shown that structure fires in machine shop often leave the machine tools in salvageable shape provided they were not hit with water when hot and allowed to cool normally. The motors and electrics may be toast but the metal parts may not have heated to the draw temp of the component steels. Much of the fire damaged machinery in Pearl Harbor Shipyard were restored to use in weeks. Those that were not drenched when hot that is.

Industrial fire loss mitigation is an interesting topic should anyone like to look into it.

We own the building. Original building was completed in 1963. We doubled the space in 1981, the new addition included sprinklers. It cost us $38k to add sprinklers to the rest of the building 2 years ago.